SEMINAR “PROFESSIONAL SPEECH COMMUNICATION IN MASS MEDIA”

The 4^th media linguistics seminar “Professional speech communication and mass media” took place on 25–26th of April within the framework of annual international Forum “Media of contemporary world: 54^th Petersburg readings”.

Discussion’s theme choosing was depended on growing interest of scientific society to the problems of professional style. There are three professional styles in media discourse. They are style of journalism, public relations and advertising. Discussion about these professional spheres was at the focus of media linguistics scientists’ attention. Scientists came from different cities of Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, USA, China etc.

Participants of the seminar were sepa­rated to five section in accordance with main ways of the problem discussion: General theory; Concepts, categories and methods of analysis in media stylistics; Typology of media speech; Media text: structure, composition, tendencies of evolution; Functioning of linguistic means in mass media. Sections titles coincided with traditional parts of scientific journal “Media linguistics” (URL: http://​medialing​.spbu​.ru). It is bound to many-sided approach to the theme discussion.

At the focus of attitude first section participants (General theory) were such actual questions as place of linguistic praxeology in the formation of professional competencies of the future media professional; importance of knowledge about communication risks for the successful professional work of journalists; the dialectics of mass media forms; functional capacity of terminology in media linguistics; media text and media linguistics: bifurcation relations; journalist professional reflection in media text.

Most interesting themes at the second section (Concepts, categories and methods of analysis in media stylistics) were analysis of idiostyle peculiarities of regulativity in up-to-date media text; speech representation of a creative personality in PR-biography; qualificative modus categories in journalistic texts; stylistic devices in media texts: polysemantics vs amphibology; professional speech practice and media texts (to the base of functional and stylistic typology).

Participants of the section concerned to typology of media speech discussed the following questions: communicative potential of advertising texts: praxeological aspects; applied aspects of media linguistic studies; advertising from a typological standpoint; political discourse and speech modalization in media text; the non-professional travelogue and the territorial image making; political media speech at modern public communication.

The fourth section (Media text: structure, composition, tendencies of evolution) participant’s discussion was focused on questions of media text structure, therefore the following themes were touched on: approaches to analysis of media products; the problem of understanding and its solutions in media communication; compositional and stylistic characteristics of persuasive PR-texts; pragmatic analysis of politi­cal interviews based on Russian and Chinese languages; “life” of media rumor; text organization of a social network.

Functioning of linguistic means in mass media was discussed at following aspects: the means of shocking speech in advertising communication; ways of creating pejorative evaluation in the “hostility” language (as exemplified in mass media new vocabulary); conceptual model name in contemporary media; grammatical pragmatics in the formation of media texts meaning; linguistic and cultural traditions as a basis of meta­phorical modelling of reality; lexical means of address in newspaper language etc.

And some words about the final plenary session. M. A. Kormilitsyna and O. B. Sirotinina (Saratov, Russia) in their joint presentation “The importance of communication risks awareness for journalist successful professional activity” have defined the notion of a communicative risk treated as a factor leading to misunderstanding of communication partners. Such factors include journalist specific job conditions time deficit when working in a live program, consideration of various implications of possible violation of law (especially dealing with invectives or extremist propaganda) and journalist dependance on editors or sponsors policy. However the main hazard in this field of activity is a lack of journalist (and editor) communicative competence.

O. S. Issers (Omsk, Russia) in her presentation titled “Fakes go flying: false information in advertising and new media practices” spoke about ludic questionable information spread in public communication with various objectives, mainly to attract the audience attention, to entertain them and to tumble their stereotypes in a playful way. Such texts became frequent in our internet era. They may be defined as quasi-facts which emphasize the problem, are easily memorized and thus can be effectively used to influence the public.

V. I. Karasik (Volgograd, Russia) in his presentation “Banalization as a manipulative action in media discourse” has described well known assertions usage cases in communication. Banal implications usually turn off a critical rational mode of information perception and thus make public an easy capture for manipulators.

L.R. Duskaeva (Saint-Petersburg) in her presentation “Professional communication in mass media” has demonstrated heuristic advantages of praxeological approach in media linguistics. This approach is aimed at the determination of various activity types organization. There exist at least three spheres of professional communication in media environment – journalist, advertising and image making activity, and they differ in their conditions of realization, content and the corresponding requirements. Each of them is presented in their specific text groups. A praxeological approach enables us to trace the pragmatic message and meaning structure of the texts specified and to explain their linguistic essence in various professional spheres with the emphasis on the language means used in those spheres, e.g. imperative meanings are mostly expressed in indirect communication means which is determined by journalist social status. On the other hand, media nature of mass communication gives a rise to proliferation of nonverbal presentation means such as graphs and diagrams.

N. S. Tsvetova (Saint-Petersburg) in her presentation “An exterior Russian language journalist art text in linguistic praxeological perspective” has analyzed media text as the central category of linguistic praxeology. This category is treated as realization of professional communication of journalists, copywriters and PR specialists. It is important that a media text reflects not only the result, but also the process of cognitive and influencing activity aimed at professional objectives achievement. Exterior Russian newspaper texts correspond to the same speech activity algorithms as those established in the journalist community. Such approach makes it possible to see both effective and not effective rules of professional journalist behavior and to work out the discordance criteria and correction recommendations.

Discussion at each section was very fruitful. It was exchange of opinions in scientist’s community of media linguists on actual questions of speech practice in media discourse.